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There's a Big Problem with Return-to-Office Mandates: Enforcing Them (yahoo.com) 35

Posted by EditorDavid from the you're-not-the-boss-of-me dept.
"Friction between bosses and their employees over the terms of their return shows no signs of abating," reports the Los Angeles Times. But there's one big loophole... About 80% of organizations have put in place return-to-office policies, but in a sign that many managers are reluctant to clamp down on the flexibility employees have become accustomed to, only 17% of those organizations actively enforce their policies, according to recent research by real estate brokerage CBRE. "Some organizations out there have 'mandated' something, but if most of your organization is not following that mandate, then there is not too much you can do to enforce it," said Julie Whelan, head of research into workplace trends for CBRE...

The tension "is due to the fact that we have changed since we all went to our separate corners and then came back" from pandemic-imposed office exile, said Elizabeth Brink, a workplace expert at architecture firm Gensler. "It's fair to say that we have different needs now." A disconnect persists between employer expectations for office attendance and employee behavior, CBRE found. Sixty percent of leaders surveyed said they want their employees in the office three or more days a week, while only 51% reported that employees work in the office at that frequency. Conversely, 37% of employees show up one or two days a week, yet only 17% of employers are satisfied with that attendance.
In the article, one worker complains about their employer's two-days-a-week of mandated in-office time. "I feel like I'm back in grade school and being forced to sit down and do my homework."

The article also notes some employers are also considering changes in the other direction: "calculating whether to shed office space to cut down on rent, typically the largest cost of operating a business after payroll."

There's a Big Problem with Return-to-Office Mandates: Enforcing Them More | Reply

There's a Big Problem with Return-to-Office Mandates: Enforcing Them

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  • Lead by example. If the c-suite wants us in the office they need to be too.

    • They've never done that before, why now?

      Something changed, and enough people are willing to say "fuck the consequences" now that in cases where companies are serious about getting their people back in the office (and not just using RTO as an excuse for stealth layoffs) can't enforce these policies without risking losing enough people to hurt the business.

      Which is FUCKING AWESOME. Getting people to cooperate for better working conditions is like herding cats. Cats that have just OD'd on catnip and then spo

      • Women are more likely to leave jobs when a return to office (RTO) happens. This is the unstated part of these RTO is good or bad news articles.

        Here's the real reason: 30% of women have someone else paying their bills or remote work at lower pay is acceptable according to the article: "nearly 30% of those women said no amount of money would lure them back to full-time work."

        A few quotes from:
        https://finance.yahoo.com/news... [yahoo.com]

        ‘The system is not working for women’: Companies with return-to-office

  • Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Interesting)

    by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @07:55PM (#64898463)
    CEOs and Board members who are personally heavily invested in commercial property are going to take a bath if/when companies start shedding office space due to employees working from home consistently.

    This is a direct conflict of interest, as the corporations they run would certainly be more profitable without renting all of that office space, and with happier, more productive employees working from home.

    Shareholders need to keep an eye on this, and should be punishing CEOs creating return to office mandates as they are reducing corporate profitability in order to keep their (the CEO's) personal commercial property investments afloat.

    • CEOs and Board members who are personally heavily invested in commercial property are going to take a bath if/when companies start shedding office space due to employees working from home consistently. This is a direct conflict of interest, as the corporations they run would certainly be more profitable without renting all of that office space, and with happier, more productive employees working from home. Shareholders need to keep an eye on this, and should be punishing CEOs creating return to office mandates as they are reducing corporate profitability in order to keep their (the CEO's) personal commercial property investments afloat.

      WTAF? Why would a software billionaire care about real estate? I get that most of /. likes to work from home...but this is an unfounded and incredibly stupid conspiracy theory. Big Tech wants you back in the office because THEY think it makes you a better employee...not because they want more rent money from these non-existent investments. You know most companies lease their office space....it's in their financial interest to reduce their office footprint....but you know what's more expensive than rent?

      • Someone has to own office buildings and industrial parks and I doubt they’re poor.

        • "Someone has to own office buildings and industrial parks and I doubt theyâ(TM)re poor."

          Very true, but irrelevant. The rich guys owning the buildings for the most part *not* the tech companies. The tech companies lease their offices; for them it's pure expense, not an asset. The people owning the buildings get no say in whether the tech companies mandate working in the office or not.

      • Where does TFA talk about Amazon or software billionaires? It's a discussion about corporations in general.

        With the exception of some very few tech billionaires who were vested initial stock in unicorn companies they started up, most millionaires and billionaires have most of their money in two things - general stocks and real estate. That's a fact. Their current salaries pale into significance compared to their assets.

        It's estimated that work from home could wipe about $US800 Billion from office valu

    • Of course, in the short-to-mid term it gets a bit more complicated since businesses typically sign fairly long leases for office space - they can't just walk away from those payments, regardless of whether there are people making use of it.

      Not to mention that the largest businesses (e.g. Amazon) often have built and own the space themselves.

      And then there are mayors and city councils who are driven by 1) a legitimate desire to protect the ancillary businesses that were created to support all those in-city w

  • ... someone puts into enforcing a policy tells you how much they think they can get away with forcing a group of people into compliance. It sends a message about how serious they are and how much they're willing to lose to enforce a policy.

    • ... someone puts into enforcing a policy tells you how much they think they can get away with forcing a group of people into compliance. It sends a message about how serious they are and how much they're willing to lose to enforce a policy.

      Are you some teenager rebelling against the assistant principal at your high school? This is your job, act like an adult. If your boss wants you in Tuscon tomorrow, either book a ticket or find a new job. All these companies have decided they want you to RTO...is that smart?...maybe?...maybe not, not for me or you to decide. Should they have an RTO policy?...that's a different debate. They made a rule. You need to follow it. If you don't...well...they've set their expectations. Either they've mandat

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hwstar ( 35834 )

        Bollocks.

        When did employers start treating employees as adults? Hint: they never did. If this were true then there wouldn't need to be so much printed in employment handbooks.

        People do what's in their and their families best interests first. Employers' interests come in a distant third after family. Most people will comply because they lack strong finances, buy there will be a few who will push the boundaries of policy, and see what they can get away with.

        If you're going to make a rule be damn sure you are

  • Working in an office has been a brief aberration for a short part of recent human history. Agrarian societies obviously largely worked from home. Pre industrial tradesmen and artisans worked from home. With the industrial revolution people got pulled into factories and offices. We're now at the point where a significant number of jobs don't have any intrinsic requirement for workers to be in any specific location. It's been covered over and over but there isn't any data to drive return to the office, i

    • >Working in an office has been a brief aberration for a short part of recent human history

      It's similar with performance arts - it's been interactive with a live performance in front of a live audience since the first fireside story, then suddenly we're all sitting like zombies in front of a bright screen that doesn't alter based on audience feedback.

      I think we're going to see that change soon with AI-generated live variations on stories adjusting for our reactions in real time.

      It is difficult to realize

      • ... since we generally only experience 8 decades of it ...

        Not enough time to learn to play bridge, properly (to paraphrase our species greatest sage, Terry Pratchett).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      Working in an office was a necessity when your signal carrier was an actual carrier, who took your messages and walked/ran/rode to the intended receiver. And that means offices came into being as soon as there were messages to transmit, because shorter distances between sender and receiver means lower round trip times. Offices thus started as soon as we had societies. The only difference today is that so many jobs are office jobs, while people working on the farm and in their own shop are a minority. If I r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      You all think you're brilliant for daring your boss to fire you. Do you think millennials were stupid? They just happened to graduate when there was a glut of people in the labor market, and they had to work side gigs just to get by. But the boomers have mostly retired (you should thank them). It's possible that the birth rate will stay low and politicians will cave to pressure and keep immigration low in which case maybe the labor market will stay tight, but if it doesn't there's going to be a huge wake

    • Ignoring the fact outright that the shift from nomadic to agrarian culture was also stupidly recent as regards to evolutionary time periods, in neither agricultural nor nomadic societies did the workers sit at the tent/home and instead went somewhere else to work, generally soon after the sun rose. The men especially wouldn't return to the tent/home until their work for the day was done.

    • So will they office monitoring your every move while at home be acceptable? It is not unimaginable that a particular workplace needs to know you are not somewhere out of webcam view doing something you are not supposed to be doing.
  • they're not enforced if they want to keep you.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hwstar ( 35834 )

      Ah, selective enforcement. This can expose a company to legal risk and get then in a whole heap of trouble in certain states (such as California).

      Of course, the employment-at-will card could be played: "We can fire anyone for any reason or no reason so long as it isn't an illegal reason". The burden of proof is on the fired employee to prove otherwise.

  • We have several years of hard evidence that many jobs can be done entirely remotely. There is no good economic or productivity reason to mandate return to office. (manager egos and corporate optics of office buildings are another thing)

    Workers now know what it's like, and many strongly prefer it. There are 3, maybe 4 companies in my commute distance that could be potential employers for my job title. When I work remote, I have access to 10's of thousands of companies across the entire united states.

    Employe

  • Enforcement is easy for full 5 day RTO, if you want to go nuclear. Just disable remote access privileges for those that don’t show up without a reason, after a suitable period of time. Reinstate once they agree at actually show up. Fire them if they don’t. Require higher level management to sign off on reinstatement.

    It’s just that very few want to go that far.

    • cut it totally and completely, its a RTO they want, so make it so. its not RTO plus also WFH aftrehours/during downtimes etc. Just cut the remote access totally, regularly vpn appliances , gateway software and client software have huge vulnerabilities so its more secure to do that too.
  • I've never worked anyplace where most people can manage themselves. Those that can are usually called managers and they always have strategic vision past the people they manage. And micromanagement is usually due to the next line manager not having the strategic vision to plan for the unforeseen and it being privileged need to know. So many at home worker seem to want it all ways, the entire picture but with none of the responsibility.

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